[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 43 (Monday, October 30, 2000)]
[Pages 2623-2627]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a New York Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee Reception 
in New York City

October 25, 2000

    The President. Thank you.
    Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years! 
[Laughter]
    The President. I'm just looking forward to being a good, law-abiding 
taxpayer of New York. [Laughter] Let me say, Mr. Speaker,

[[Page 2624]]

I thank you for inviting me here tonight and for your truly outstanding 
leadership. You've had a lonely post in a State with a Republican 
Governor and a Republican Senate. And I have watched for years, long 
before I could have known we'd be in the positions we're in today, where 
I'm out here campaigning for a Senate spouse. [Laughter] And I admire so 
much what you have done, and I was honored to be invited to come by and 
be with you tonight.
    I thank our Democratic Chair, Judith Hope, and all the members of 
the assembly who are here. I feel so grateful to New York for many 
reasons--for the extraordinary support that you have given to me and Al 
Gore from 1992 on. Knowing that there would be 33 electoral votes in the 
can before we had to worry about the rest has been an enormous sense of 
psychological support for us these past 8 years.
    I thank you for the uncommon kindness and generosity that so many of 
you have shown to my wife in this very long campaign, about a 16-month 
campaign she's waged now. And I think it will be successful, in no small 
measure because people like you have helped her. And I'm very grateful 
to you for that.
    I, also, as a lifelong baseball nut, I thank you for giving us the 
best World Series in 50 years.
    I want to say just two things seriously, if I might. First of all, 
as I think all of you know, I was a Governor for a dozen years before I 
ran for President, and I think I understand the connection between the 
Federal and State Government about as well as anybody. I understand that 
no matter what we do in Washington and how well we do it, the impact 
that our policies have on real people depends in part on how 
aggressively a State does its job.
    New York, for example, because you had a program to insure children 
previously, has been one of the most successful States in enrolling 
children in our Children's Health Insurance Program. And I know a lot of 
you have been very active in that. I'll give you--the polar opposite 
case is the legislature in Arizona got a bill passed through the 
legislature which literally prohibited the schools of Arizona from 
enrolling children in the program in school. So not surprisingly, 
they're not doing very well.
    But that illustrates the point. The flip side is that no matter how 
well you try to do your job, if you have a lousy economy, it will be 
harder for you. There won't be as many taxpayers, and there will be a 
lot more drain on the State treasury. And if we make bad decisions in 
terms of how these funds are allocated, it will be tough for you.
    And I tried to be very, very sensitive to that for the last 8 years. 
And I can give you one example of that now, that our friend Congressman 
Engel, who also previously served in the New York Assembly, and he's 
here with us tonight, is helping me on.
    In 1997, when we passed the Balanced Budget Act, because the 
Democrats had taken all the tough decisions in '93 alone, without any 
help from the other party--when the Vice President cast the tie-breaking 
vote and began to turn this country around, something I believe he'll be 
rewarded for 2 weeks from yesterday--we knew we had to slow the rate of 
growth of health care expenditures. And we agreed to take the estimates 
of the Congressional Budget Office, just like your legislative budget 
operation here, about what changes would be necessary to achieve a 
certain level of savings.
    Now, we thought at the time that they had overestimated what had to 
be done. But we all agreed to play by the same rules. We did it in good 
faith, and we had a remarkable moment of bipartisan harmony. Now there 
is 100 percent agreement that the changes that we instituted in 1997 
were too draconian and that the Medicare programs are not properly 
funded. And there is a bipartisan agreement to put $28 billion back into 
Medicare. But we're having a huge fight down there about how to allocate 
it. And our friends in the Republican caucus basically asked the 
Democrats in Congress and the representatives of the White House to 
leave, and they cut the money up and gave a third of the money to the 
HMO's, without any guarantees, I might add. The argument was that all 
over America, especially in a lot of small towns in rural America, HMO's 
were dropping their Medicare recipients. That's true. But they put the 
money in without any

[[Page 2625]]

guarantee that they'll take them back and keep them once they take them 
back.
    So it has the feeling of a political decision that won't have a good 
policy impact. And it has the consequence of depriving urban hospitals, 
teaching hospitals, nursing homes, home health care agencies, hospice 
operations, and a few other smaller health care providers of the funds 
they need to serve people on Medicare.
    So we're in--one of the last-minute struggles we're in as we try to 
finish this congressional session, already about a month late this week, 
is trying to get a fair share for New York of these health care funds, 
but not just for New York, for everybody in the country that's in the 
same situation you're in.
    But it will have a lot to do with how well you can do your job in 
the coming year whether we make the right decision or not in the next 48 
hours. So I come here basically as a Governor and as a President who has 
8 years of experience understanding that if you do your job well, the 
policies I've fought for will be validated. If you don't, the impact of 
the policies will be severely limited. And I know that if we don't do 
the right things in Washington, we're making your load an awful lot 
heavier. So that's why I'm honored to be here.
    Now let me just say three things that I promised myself I would say 
to every group I saw between now and the election. And they're the same 
things I would say if I were sitting alone in a room with any of you and 
you asked me why we should be supporting Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, 
Hillary, Eliot, all the Democrats. There are three great questions that 
the voters will resolve in this election, whether consciously or 
unconsciously. Whether they vote or stay home, there will be three great 
questions resolved.
    One is, are we going to keep this prosperity going and extend it to 
the people who aren't a part of it yet? We say the first thing we've got 
to do is keep paying this debt down, because the decision we made to get 
rid of the deficits in '93 led to an immediate drop in interest rates, a 
big increase in the stock market, and people saved huge money on 
business loans and everything else that requires credit. And we have to 
keep doing that.
    We set aside the money to do that and then say, with the money 
that's left we'll have a tax cut we can afford, that will focus on the 
needs of working families, to educate their children, send them to 
college, for child care, for long-term care for the elderly and the 
disabled, for retirement savings, but we'll have one we can afford and 
still have the money we need to invest in education, health care, the 
environment, national security, and our future.
    Now, that's very important, because our friends on the other side 
say that we can afford a trillion and a half dollar tax cut, a trillion 
dollar Social Security privatization program, and $500 billion worth of 
spending. There is no way you can cram $3 trillion into a $2 trillion 
projected surplus--which won't be that big, ask Eliot, there's no way 
it's going to be that big, not after this session of Congress--without 
going into deficit.
    If you go into deficit, it means higher interest rates. The Gore-
Lieberman plan will keep interest rates about a percent lower for a 
decade. That's worth $390 billion in lower home mortgage payments, $30 
billion in lower car payments, $15 billion in lower college loan 
payments, lower credit card payments, lower business loans, means more 
businesses, more jobs, and a higher stock market. This is not rocket 
science. This is elementary mathematics. You need to drive this home to 
everybody you talk to. It's an issue in the President's race. It's an 
issue in the Senate race. It's an issue in the races for Congress, and 
it will dramatically affect what you do in the State Assembly for the 
next 4 years.
    The second issue is, are we going to build on the progress we've 
made in bringing our society together or reverse policy? Now, look, in 
the last 8 years the welfare rolls have been cut in half; there is a 26-
year low in crime; the environment is cleaner; the air is cleaner; the 
water is cleaner; the drinking water is safer; we've cleaned up 3 times 
as many toxic waste dumps. And we've proved you can do it and grow the 
economy. We've got a decline in the number of people who don't have 
health insurance, for the first time in a dozen years--again, thanks a 
lot to people like you who have made sure we enroll these children in 
the Children's Health Insurance Program. And the schools are getting 
better: The drop-

[[Page 2626]]

out rate is lower; the college-going rate is at an all-time high; the 
reading and math scores are up. We know now how to turn around these 
failing schools.
    So we have to decide, are we going to build on this prosperity, this 
progress? That's what Gore and Lieberman and Hillary and all the people 
running for Congress have advocated. They'll give you more tools to help 
make the schools better, to help improve the health care system and 
provide insurance to people who don't have it, to provide a Medicare 
drug program, to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights. They'll continue to 
make the environment cleaner. They'll continue to drive the crime rate 
down by putting more police on the street.
    In every single one of these areas they're running against people 
who, in good conscience I think, want to reverse all these policies. 
Now, it's not like you haven't had a test run here. You need to talk to 
people about that. We tried it our way. We tried it their way. Our way 
works better. [Laughter] It works. The evidence is in.
    And the third great question is whether we're going to continue to 
build one America as we grow more diverse. Shelley mentioned the work 
that we've done in the Middle East and are doing. And that takes about 
half of every day I have now and most of the night. We are, as ever, 
committed to the security of the State of Israel and committed to the 
proposition that if it can be done honorably, the long-term security of 
Israel is best served by a just peace. It is very tough over there now, 
and I'm doing what I can.
    Some of you mentioned the work we've done in Ireland. I thank you 
for that. New York also has a lot of people from the Balkans who have 
commented to me in the last few weeks how grateful they are that Mr. 
Milosevic is gone and that we ended ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and 
Kosovo.
    But the point I want to make for tonight is that in order for the 
United States to continue to do good around the world, we have to be 
good at home. We have to be an example of a genuine, tolerant, open 
society. And the Democrats, therefore, are for the hate crimes bill. 
They're for the employment nondiscrimination bill. They're for 
immigration fairness legislation that we're fighting like crazy for in 
the closing days of this legislative session. They're for continuing our 
national service program. They're for equal pay for women. They're for a 
woman's right to choose and appointments to the judiciary that will 
generally reflect the ability of legislative bodies, including the 
Congress to protect the rights and the interests of the American people. 
Now, that is a very important--[inaudible].
    And this election will determine, therefore, whether we keep the 
prosperity going and extend it to people who aren't part of it yet, 
whether we keep the social progress going and build on it, and whether 
we continue to build one America. Those are the three great questions. 
And I just hope that every day you can, between now and election, you 
will share those three points with as many people as you can, because 
this is a great time. I've done as--I've worked as hard as I could to 
turn the country around, to move it forward, to pull it together. But 
when Al Gore says to you that the best is yet to come and you ain't seen 
nothing yet, when a person running for office says that, it may sound 
like a campaign statement. But I'm not running for anything for the 
first time in 26 years--[laughter]--and I believe that.
    It takes a long time to turn a country around. All the best things 
are still out there. All the best things are still out there. That's 
what he and Joe Lieberman have been talking about. That's what Hillary 
has tried to talk about in this election. And we may never have another 
chance in our lifetime to have a moment like this, that we can mold for 
our children and our grandchildren.
    So I think you should all be happy; you should be confident; you 
should be proud to be members of the Democratic Party. And you ought to 
go out there and bear down, every day between now and election, and turn 
as many voters as you can here and in New Jersey and in any other place 
in America where you know people that would be more likely to help us if 
they knew those simple three things. And remember, not voting is almost 
as bad as voting against us.
    So turn them out, and we'll have a great celebration in 2 weeks.
    Thank you.

[[Page 2627]]

Note: The President spoke at 5:45 p.m. at the Four Seasons Hotel. In his 
remarks, he referred to Sheldon (Shelley) Silver, speaker, New York 
State Assembly; Judith Hope, chair, New York State Democratic Party; and 
former President Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal Republic of 
Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro).